Posted on 02/12/2005 11:59:27 AM PST by NYer
Rome, Feb. 11, 2005 (CNA) - Forensic scientists in Italy are working on a different kind of investigation—one that dates back 2000 years.
In an astounding announcement, the scientists think they may have re-created an image of Jesus Christ when He was a 12-year old boy.
Using the Shroud of Turin, a centuries-old linen cloth, which many believe bears the face of the crucified Christ, the investigators first created a computer-modeled, composite picture of the Christ’s face.
Dr. Carlo Bui, one of the scientists said that, “the face of the man on the shroud is the face of a suffering man. He has a deeply ruined nose. It was certainly struck."
Then, using techniques usually reserved for investigating missing persons, they back dated the image to create the closest thing many will ever see to a photograph of the young Christ.
“Without a doubt, the eyes... That is, the deepness of the eyes, the central part of the face in its complexity”, said forensic scientist Andrea Amore, one of the chief investigators who made the discovery.
The shroud itself, a 14-foot long by 3.5-foot wide woven cloth believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus, is receiving renewed attention lately.
A Los Alamos, New Mexico scientist has recently cast grave doubt that the carbon dating originally used to date the shroud was valid. This would suggest that the shroud may in fact be 2000 years old after all, placing it precisely in the period of Christ’s crucifixion.
Correct -- you think, hope, wish; you don't know.
It would be the unmistakable "proof" and a dream-come-true for Christians to convert the rest of the world to Christ. In other words, God has to prove Himself worthy of our belief! Isn't it how human pride works? He is to satisfy our uncertainty before we can believe His sales pitch?
That's why Jesus reminded us that "blessed are those who believe but have not seen." But that's not how we want it, because satan has convinced us back in the Garden of Eden that we can be just like God, and since then we can't imagine anything more powerful than we are unless we see it.
We could equally well postulate that satan planted the Shroud and the Olviedo Cloth to tempt us, knowing how easy it would be to give in to it. People would worship the cloth! Talk about blasphemy!
The proof of God is not in the Shroud, but in His Creation. Just as you don't doubt that a house next to you was created by an architect and built by a builder, so it is obvious that all of Creation was designed by an Architect and built by a Builder.
We know God through His energies, His Wisdom, Word and Holy Spirit, and not through sorcery. Perhaps there is a reason why there is no original of any of the Scripture, and why there is no trace of any of the events described in the Bible. It is to separate those who believe and those who need proof.
We disagree about the utility of science in understanding faith.
I am not sure what you mean by "utility of science in understanding faith." But I can surmise that you believe that science can somehow prove what we believe in.
It happened once before. It was the Ptolemnaic mathematical model that the Church readily used as proof of its theological concepts of man's spiritual centrality of God's Creation with his physical centrality in the Universe. It was called the geocentric system. In fact, the theology, mathematics and Aristotelian philosophy all pointed to the same conclusion -- independently! -- that the earth is at the center and everything (symbolically and objectively) revolved around us (Aristotle argued that the reason things fall towards earth is because thing "naturally" fall towards a center). scientific method (postulate, observation, theory, working model). His model works to this day, although it is based on a wrong premise -- that the Sun rotates around us. Working models of science do not represent complete reality, but they work for a narrow spectrum of observable phenomena. More often than not, science does not answer why but only how.
Science does not "prove" a belief, but provides a working model of something observed. There is no faith involved. We can say that we have faith in science because it produces repeatable and consistent results (on demand). This is not the same faith as the one we have in God.
If science (something created) could prove God (uncreated), we would not need to believe -- we would know! Going to your Shroud -- so even if the science can pinpoint the date of the Shroud with credible certainty to within a few years and it turns out that it just around 33 AD, what does that prove? How will science prove that the image in the cloth is Jesus? We don't have His DNA. What if the Oviedo Cloth has the same DNA? Does that prove it? of course not!
So please explain your short comment that we disagree about the utility of science in understanding [sic!] faith. Thank you.
"...scientific model" = "Ptolemy used scientific model..."
"You may produce a citation list if you like as to what you feel was quoted from the LXX; but, that doesn't tell us "which" LXX or whether that was considered Scripture."
I certainly could do so, but it is an arduous task.
And one that is not necessary, given your position.
What you have said, essentially, is that no matter how great the extent that Jesus and the Apostles relied upon the Greek Septuagint and not the Hebrew texts of the Scriptures, that this will do nothing to establish, from your perspective, the authority of the Septuagint as the proper basis for the Christian Canon of Scripture.
Given that my position is that Jesus' and the Apostles' use of the Septuagint is PRECISELY what establishes the Septuagint's authority, we are at loggerheads on the issue.
Going to the trouble of demonstrating the extent to which Jesus and the Apostles primarily and overwhelmingly used the Septuagint will merely establish that they did do so, as far as you are concerned. Though they were Jews too, just like the rabbis of Jamnia, you will continue to give authority to the Jamnian Jews over the Christian ones as to who gets to fix the Old Testament Canon.
So, given that it will not really affect our discussion, and would be a lot of work to boot, I don't see any purpose served in actually typing out all of those concordances and citations. That would be for a different discussion, one in which the issue of authority was at least open.
In truth, both your and my minds are closed on the subject, and all we can do now is just keep reiterating the same positions. Citing Jesus citing to the Septuagint won't affect the underlying conflict - you said so yourself - so I think we just need to leave the trench line where drawn.
The effect of it is that we read different Bibles, and based on those Bibles draw different conclusions about theology. I doubt that ultimately this will make much difference in the outcome of our particular cases in Heaven. This is an argument that will have to wait to the afterlife to be settled. There is no place further to go for us on this one.
"So please explain your short comment that we disagree about the utility of science in understanding [sic!] faith. Thank you."
I think that thought, observation and ideas are not natural process, but are the part of us that is directly divine in origin.
And I think that physical nature is the handiwork of God.
So I believe that through the precise use of the divine part of our nature: our minds, we can obtain a greater closeness to God by looking at his handiwork: the world.
I certainly find this route to be deeply inspiring, although it's not for everyone. Likewise religious liturgies. Some folks swear by the Latin Mass, which is beautiful. I like the regular plain vanilla New Mass, though, and find it spiritually fulfilling. I feel no need, therefore, to drive for miles and miles to find a Latin Mass. It does not bother me that other people do this, just as I do not think there is anything wrong with keeping strict fasts and the like, or giving up meat for Lent. If that is meaningful for a person, then by all means he should do it. I don't feel any need to do that.
On the other hand, I draw great inspiration from contemplating God's handiwork in the universe with a tranquil mind. And natural science is an amazingly useful tool for understanding [sic] the open proofs of the truth of my faith.
I can see that YOU do not need to go about it this way.
I do.
But I DO! That desire to "understand" faith (and through faith God) is as natural as your dog not wanting to stop eating what he likes! There is a great deal of pleasure in realizing that with which we are surrounded. Nature is, indeed, an on-going show that puts anything you can see on Broadway or from Hollywood to shame.
At one point in your life you just realize that the church Fathers knew nothing of science and a lot more of God. You also realize that knowing the history in bits and pieces is as good as not knowng it at all. It's like reading a book every 30-50 pages and skipping everything inbetween!
I love science. My entire education is in science. My hobby, which almost became my calling is astronomy, in particular optics and optical design and engineering. Astronomy was what drew me away from God at first and then back to Him.
Nature is wonderful because it is the handiwork of God, and it is here for us to learn and discover. It is an endless array of toys and miracles. But we cannot understand faith through science. We simply will never know enough, nor could we for that matter learn enough, or comprehend enough, or see enough, or measure neough. All we can do is make working models which are not the way things are; they are just working models.
As for your impression that thought, observation and ideas are not natural processes, but are part of wthat is directly divine in origin, that is maybe your impression but I think it is not true. Animals have mental processes that resemble thinking; they certainly observe and make some connection. They form mental (abstract) images, which is something you can demonstrate with tests.
But what they lack and what we have is first and foremost the knowledge of God, then mercy and justice. Neither is a "natural" phenomenon.
If science were the key to understanding faith (and God), then our scientists should be the most faithful and religious members of the society. They are not.
You did not explain to me how will science prove that the impression on the Shroud is that of Jesus. With what will it prove that it is Him? With DNA? Whose DNA?
You are confusing your taste and preference for simple Mass with scientific "utility" in understanding the faith. I am sorry, you have shown absolutely nothing to confirm that science has any utility in faith or why such utility would be profitable. The Faith was delivered to the Apostles and they knew the faith without science. None was a scientist, not one!
The more we discover of the Creation, the more we realize the enormity of God's handiwork and His glory. But we do not understand it any more.
"You are confusing your taste and preference for simple Mass with scientific "utility" in understanding the faith. I am sorry, you have shown absolutely nothing to confirm that science has any utility in faith or why such utility would be profitable."
I am not confusing anything.
As to not having "shown" anything, I think I have. You don't accept what I have shown. In the same way, involving different facts, it was similar with Havoc. When he said that EVEN IF I went to the trouble of laying out in detail how Jesus and the Apostles used the Septuagint, this would prove NOTHING about the Old Testament Canon, I decided to simply leave it at that.
What's the use in arguing about these things?
Sirach tells us to not travel through the desert with a contentious man, and that's good advice.
I am almost there in discussing the utility science has for religion, but I'll answer your specific question on the Shroud.
Here is how I look at the Shroud.
The vanillin tests show that it could well be first century.
Studies of the composition of the image shows that it is not manmade. The finding of a second, faint, mirror image on the outside of the cloth confirms this. Whatever the Shroud is, it is not a man made forgery. Therefore, it was made by nature. Nature is controlled by God. Nothing happens by accident.
There is no OTHER piece of cloth, new or ancient, that is anything like this. It is postulated that the image may have been caused by a chemical reaction caused by the contact of a dead body with linen cloth for limited period. The problem, of course, is that the image is perfect and not stretched. Also, the lettering on the Roman coins covering the eyes have been read by some examiners. If bodies give off fumes, coins do NOT.
The pollen on the Shroud includes grains from plants that only live in the areas around Jerusalem.
So, I have a cloth that could be first century, at Jerusalem, made by natural process yet having features (the lettering of the coins) which no natural process we can think of can explain. And I have a perfect image, without stains or smears on it, which we cannot reproduce nor model how it may have gotten there.
The fact that this shroud is one-of-a-kind, that there's no OTHER burial shroud for anything from any era that has this sort of strange image on it is interesting.
Then, of course, there is the CONTENT of the image: a crucified male, with unbroken legs, head wounds indicative of a crown of thorns, terribly scourged, and lanced in the side. The image PERFECTLY represents the crucifixion as described in the Gospels. But it is NOT man-made. Science does show us that.
Start trying to model probabilities: that ONE burial shroud in Palestinian history should have survived, that it should contain an inexplicable, non-man-made image that bears the identical wounds of the crucified Jesus, and has Roman coins on its eyes with Pontius Pilate's inscription on them.
Now multiply the artifacts by TWO, because the Blood on the Shroud MATCHES the Blood on the Oviedo Cloth: both the rarest blood type of all: AB. The various chemical traces and smears on the Oviedo cloth show that it was very probably the head wrapping of a crucifixion victim.
Strain the probabilities, and you've got two cloths, both purporting to be the burial cloths of Jesus, with the same blood type on them, and blood coming from a crucified man.
Since these effects are natural, not man made, we are not dealing with forgeries. And we don't have even one other example of anything that looks to have been able to make this cloth.
Also, both cloths have been preserved to our day, down all the long centuries. We can trace each in the histories back to 500 or 600 AD.
When I apply my juridical mind to these facts, I find that a heavy preponderance of the evidence is that these are the burial cloths of Jesus. I also find the image to be outright miraculous. A body might give off gasses that maybe, under perfect conditions, MIGHT produce an image. But TWO images (both faces of the cloth)? Starts to get tougher to believe.
And coins don't give off gasses at all. That the lettering itself of the coins made it onto the fabric is also crucial in my thinking. This is a photographic negative, not man made, and if the body images, under 1 in 100 billion circumstances MIGHT have been able to be made by strange chemical interactions that happened to be PERFECT in duration to last that long, could be natural, the lettering on the coins can't be explained in this way. I am satisfied, very well satisfied, that this is a photographic image that cannot be explained by either human artifice or natural forces. The coins are the clincher for the latter, as far as I am concerned. This is a photographic image of a supernatural event.
That we have it, that it was preserved for us is itself an indication, to me, that God intended us to have this. Indeed, I think He intended it to have PRECISELY the effect on human beings of my mental bent that it does on ME.
Suppose we didn't have the Shroud?
Well, then we would have the Traditions and the Gospels, and they are good. But they have weaknesses. They conflict. The Tradition comes with a history, and there is much in that history that is ugly and has moral baggage. It is easily to overlook this when faith is strong, but there are times when these things move front and center. Every time I have one of these bruising battles with evangelicals on this site, I walk away and start to shake my head in disgust, and it makes me disgusted and alarmed at the political power of the Christian Right...even though I belong to it. It makes me wonder if I have bought a bill of goods.
I can certainly rationally dismiss the traditions and the Bible, if I apply a very critical mind to it.
But then I run into the Shroud, which for all of the reasons I gave has been scientifically proven to me beyond a reasonable doubt to be the photographic record of a miracle. THAT I cannot explain away by politics or artifice or anything else. The Gospel tales I can sometimes decide are too good to be true, and written after the fact: very good literature, but fiction. The Church I can see for its good, but also its evils over history. I can dismiss it. But the Shroud was not made by man, and really nature as far as I understand it couldn't come close to doing that either, especially not the coins. The Shroud is a massive heavy stone that clunks down on the scales on the side of Christ, that I cannot get around precisely BECAUSE of the science involved with it. I've got a first century photograph of a miracle...therefore, there are miracles, and miracles associated with THAT man, and therefore... one thing follows the next, and I find that although I can intellectually deconstruct the religious texts and the religion, the scientific facts of the Shroud, in turn, demolish my deconstructive efforts.
I think that God left the Shroud as He did to do EXACTLY THAT. I believe that the use that I put to the Shroud is PRECISELY why He left the Shroud. To use a poetic analogy, it is the Light of Earendil, which shines forth in the darkness when my faith falters. Because with it, the tables are reversed. It is inexpicable. The efforts to make it man-made or a purely natural product are the ones that are hopelessly strained and unbelievable. Coins do not putrefy. And the coins left their letters in the cloth too. Bodies can't be moved without smearing blood. But the blood is not smeared.
I note in reading the Gospel of John, that the effect of the Shroud on John seems to have been the same as it is on me. It says "He saw and believed". The thing he saw was the Shroud of Turin.
So, that is how science has the greatest utility in understanding my faith. The science of the Shroud is a massive, heavy weight on the scales in favor of the Truth of the faith.
I do not suggest that you need to look at it this way at all.
But I do.
No, I was rather more specific than that. To the extent that the Septuigent was used, You must prove what was in it specifically. This is no small matter. What you're attempting to do is to say 'the Septuigent' was used, thus any version you happen to like, then, must be the one that was used. It is more proper to say, 'A version of the Septuigent' may have been used. To the extent it may have been, you must then prove what version and whether it was specifically considered canon.
Your problem in it's simplest form is that you are saying, "This is scripture. This is what constituted scripture. We have no proof of it. And history argues against us on it. But trust us." The point is that when establishing authority, "trust us" doesn't cut it. And failing to establish proper authority here leaves you with none.
My mind isn't closed on the subject, it is merely not satisfied by claims posing as facts in absence of any to suitably establish authority. Your position, literally, is "trust us". And that is antithetical to the end you wish to achieve.
You're caught up on the notion of the Septuigent as though every reference to that word is a reference to a fixed collection of books. Were that so, you would have some basis for an argument. As it happens, that is not so. Thusly, you must establish what was considered 'the septuigent' by anyone claiming to call upon it. This is obvious even given our current state in referring to "The Bible". What constitutes "the Bible" varies widely depending on who's agenda is at question.
Either you don't get this, won't get it or are hoping no one else does. "The Septuigent" does not refer to a specific, fixed list of books. Thusly, you can no more reference one version of it to support all the others than you can reference the King James version as argument for the canonicity of the Vulgate. Historically speaking, the times for the two are reversed; but, the KJV includes books that are in the Vulgate while the Vulgate includes books not in the KJV.
Let's underscore the point further, shall we. If we decide arbitrarily to just pick a version of the Septuigent and say "this is the authoritative version." We start by citing the "Alexandrian Version". The problem again becomes, Which Alexandrian Version. One of them does not include Maccabees. How then do you decide which is correct? This is a matter of defining our terms here. If you can't define what Jesus and the Apostles may have referenced as "the Septuigent" it is useless to your point. Yet, you must establish it as a matter of proof in making your claim to authority. If you cannot prove your position, no authority is established and any other discussion that proceeds from that stance is then moot on absence of authority. 'Trust us' doesn't cut it.
Does it matter what Jesus looked like while He was here? Does it matter what He looks like now, after the Resurrection and Ascension?
Being able to appreciate something with one's mind is not necessarily a basis for whether that thing is proper or not. It goes without saying that different people glean pleasure from different things. Depending on their heartset before God, those things can be vastly different - such as with Homosexuality... When your experience stops being one of selective understanding of what is permissable and focuses on arbitrary flights of fancy and feeling, then you're already in deep doo. With due respect and proper apologies, If a man can get all warm and fuzzy inside over looking at the behind and genitalia of another man, feelings are at once exposed for their deceptive capacity.
Keep in mind, back in Eden, Satan didn't establish his authority. Eve bought it based on a call to feeling and desire. Satan refuted without any authority every position that God profferred on what she was going to do, then made up lies about what the would be 'actual' outcome might be. This in and of itself should tell us that feeling and desire should not govern our approach to what is proper. In absence of authority for your position, you're again saying 'trust us' or 'trust your feelings and desires' instead of saying, 'trust God and reject that which you cannot verify'
How beautiful you think the Latin Mass is does not establish for us the extent to which it is proper. Authority is required to make that determination. And feeling/Desire is largely antithetical to authority.
No. It doesn't. How Jesus looked or what he looked like isn't what saves our souls. What matters is the message.
Prophecy tells us there will be those in our time that will go about saying they either are Jesus or have seen him. It also tells us to ignore that in preference to message. Feeling and appearances are two things that get us into trouble constantly.. Men end up with Gold-diggers and women with abusive ego maniacs based on appearances and feelings. When one fails to rationally critique what they're seeing, they get into trouble.
I would like to mention, however, that (1) the age cannot be ascertained with any degree of reasonable certainty. carbon-dating is simply not that precise. (2) the impression on the cloth was not made off by "fumes" of a dead body but by burial oils. The coins would have very likely been contaminated by the oils as well. (3) If God wanted us to have this somewhat enigmatic testament of Him, which is not even today possible to ascertain, is it not a little strange that He would not want us to have the original Scripture, so as to not have any controversy over what is what?
"If God wanted us to have this somewhat enigmatic testament of Him, which is not even today possible to ascertain, is it not a little strange that He would not want us to have the original Scripture, so as to not have any controversy over what is what?"
No, it is not strange at all.
Not even a little bit.
The people who are obsessed with Scripture are US.
Not the ancient Jews, as long as the Temple was up. Because as long as there was a Temple, there were High Priests and a Sanhedrin, and THEY were the final authorities in Judaism, not texts. Yes, they followed texts, but not just texts, and the texts meant what they said they meant. One need only look at the 26 volumes of the Talmud, or the multiple volumes of its oldest part, the Mishna, all written down after the destruction of the Temple and the High Priesthood as an attempt to preserve Jewish law which could no longer be LIVED because the vital living heart at the center of Judaism - the Temple and its priests - to realize that the bulk of Judaism was, and is, not contained in the Scripture at all. And the Mishna was not even in existence when the Temple was up, because the Jewish Law was what the High Priest and Sanhedrin said it was. There were no Jewish Protestants. The man who picked up the Torah and started to scream that it said things other than what the duly constituted Temple authorities said the law said, was not a "Jew seeking purity". He was a false prophet, a blasphemer, and put to death.
The Jews did not have a closed canon of Scripture before Jamnia precisely because to the Jews of the Temple, Scripture was NOT the center of the religion: the Temple and its rites were. Now, THEY, of course, drew their original authority from the Torah, but the Torah MEANT what they said it meant. If you read it and saw something different, you were wrong by definition, because you were not a priest in the bloodline, and were not given the authority by God to say such things.
Jesus followed that model. He left a Church where the authority reposed in men, only. He left no Scripture at all. Not a sentence of it. He gave the powers of the keys, to loose and to bind, and to forgive sins too, to the apostles. They delegated it to bishops and elders. Sometimes they wrote letters, like Paul's epistles, to specific churches to address specific problems, but for as long as they were alive the authority reposed in the men, and one could not hold up a letter of Paul and say "This is Scripture!" The response would have been "That is blasphemy!"
As the apostles passed from the scene, and heresies multiplied, so did the texts. Indeed, that was the first big battle between the authority of men in the apostolic, orthodox succession, and the Gnostics and others. The Gnostics and others brought forward new texts to challenge the authority of the men in the apostolic succession. Of course they put together, over time, a canon that excluded these texts, but the primary authority always lay with the bishops in apostolic succession, and never in the texts.
That was the way God made the Temple, until he made the Church, and that is how He made the Church too. Thus the question: which has the final authority: the Tradition? or Sola Scriptura?
Scripture is good, but it can be made into an idol. The Gnostics wrote their own "scripture" and used it to lure away those people who thought writings were more important than bishops and priests. But the writings of the New Testament were WRITTEN by bishops, and only have authority as part of the Tradition because they were selected by bishops as the canon. Certainly the Holy Spirit guided them, so that Scriptures faithfully transmit the Word of God, but the reason we know it's the word of God is because it came out of bishops with the authority to say so, because of the apostolic succession, and NOT because of the content of the works.
Jesus didn't leave a written scripture, but he did leave bishops, because scripture was not as important to Jesus as bishops. It is WE who focus on Scripture as the pinnacle of the faith, but that is wrong. The CHURCH is the pinnacle of the faith. The Scriptures are just a Church book, holy because the Church is Holy, useful within the context of the Church that wrote them to serve its needs. Outside of the Church, the Scriptures become a source of mischief, error and evil, like powerful medicines which become poisons when improperly dispensed and used.
Jesus left a Church and probably a Shroud.
The Church gave us a Bible.
All three things are good.
And the Shroud certainly helps ME to take the Bible more seriously than I would without it, because it anchors the miracles contained therein in reality. Jesus didn't just come and say great things. To get people to listen and believe he performed wonders. I think that the Shroud was his final, permanent wonder, a photograph of a miracle and an aid to faith for all time.
Others disagree, which is their right.
This is merely what I think and why.
What I can do is to point to most of the places where the Old Testament is cited, and point that the Hebrew version that later became the Massoretic Text was NOT used.
It is true, there are variations on the Septuagint.
It is also true that whatever version Jesus was using, it wasn't the Hebrew version that later became the Massoretic Text.
I understand your assertion that because there are variations on the Septuagint, we cannot identify a specific one without appealing to the authority of the Church that selected the one that is canonical. True.
The same logic, though, establishes that since Jesus certainly did NOT use the Massoretic text, since his citations of Scripture are not Massoretic but Septuagint, that the Massoretic Text is not Scripture either.
So, we come down to duelling authorities: the rabbis of Jamnia, the bishops of the Catholic Church, and Jesus. Take your pick.
I can prove that the text used by Jesus was NOT the Massoretic Text, which proves, at least, that as far as THOSE Scriptures go, the Massoretic Text is NOT canonical...at least as far as Jesus is concerned. I assign final authority to his choices on these matters, and don't think that a Christian can do otherwise.
I certainly cannot establish, without looking at what the Church DID select, which of the Septuagint versions, exactly, is the proper canon.
I certainly can establish, by the fact that whatever text Jesus is quoting, it is NOT the current Jewish text, that the current Jewish text - the Massoretic text - is NOT canon. If it was, Jesus would have used it. He didn't.
Your problem, in its simplest form, is that applying your logic leaves you without an Old Testament at all, and it leaves you without a New Testament too, since the same Church that chose the Old Testament chose the New.
I get what you are saying.
The extension of it is that Jesus and the Apostles clearly did NOT cite to the Massoretic text, whatever the Septuagint was or wasn't, the Massoretic text certainly is NOT Scripture: because it's not the one Jesus was using.
This is not necessarily the case either. Reread your comment. It is like saying revolvers are not proper on the police force because the Sgt. uses a semi-automatic 9mm Baretta. Selecting a tool useful to a job doesn't exclude others necessarily; but, it neither makes them official or unofficial unless someone of authority so states, etc.. You are assuming an aweful lot with no support whatever.
I certainly can establish, by the fact that whatever text Jesus is quoting, it is NOT the current Jewish text, that the current Jewish text - the Massoretic text - is NOT canon. If it was, Jesus would have used it. He didn't.
You can't say this either. For all you know, he used that text and the writers drew the same statements from the Greek to serve an audience that largely spoke Greek. The leap you are making here is of the same sort of fallacy you attempted to presume upon us above.
The Hebrew texts are canon as defined by the Israelites who had the authority to so decide the issue. Regardless of opinions as to what you think of this, it is the case. And absent any factual evidence to show a different canon, we have the Hebrew Canon of the OT and know what they decided it is and would be. Absent any factual evidence, that is the limit of authority that exists. To the extent that you overstep those limits, you abandone any claim for authority.
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